essay iv
Factors That Shape Your Identity Identity is a term used to explain who a person is. Every individual has an identity and not a single one is the same. A person’s identity is their own. Nobody puts it there and nobody can take it away. Every individual in this world has a different identity because each of them make their own over the course of life. There is no one thing that gives you a identity. However, there are many contributing factors to one’s identity such as: family, culture, and environment . Maxine Hong Kingston, Zora Neale Hurston, and Bich Minch Nguyen are three authors who wrote to provide a better understanding of how these factors influence an individual’s identity. Family plays a very important role in an individual’s life. It is your family that creates you. The way you look, act, think, and believe are all traits you receive from your family. Maxine Hong Kingston’s “No Name Woman” is an excellent example of how your family helps to shape your identity. At the very beginning of the story, a mother is telling a story to her child about an aunt who passed away and never really gained an identity. The mother then explains to her child that her aunt committed suicide because of a wrong choice she mad in life, adultery. “Now that you have stared to menstruate, what happened to her could happen to you. Don’t humiliate us. You wouldn’t like to be forgotten as if you had never been born. The villagers are watchful” (Kingston 393). This phrase used by the mother is very powerful. The mother is telling this story to her child to teach her a lesson about the consequences of committing adultery. The mother is not trying to say that if you choose to commit adultery your identity will be lost. She is simply saying that they are ashamed of the child’s aunt and would like to forget about her but they can not because you can not take a person’s identity away whether you would like to or not. Family also plays an important role In Zora Neale Hurston’s “How It Feels to Be Colored Me.” This particular essay is about a young black child who grew up in an all black town in Florida.